RABid

Wow. University of Kentucky and University of Louisville both closed, along with state offices in Kentucky.

This guy has a BUNCH of VCV rack videos. I'm finding them very useful. I've also found that if I divide the process of building a rack from the process of making music I am more productive.

When we sold my parents' house I tried and tried to find someone to take the Boston piano made in the late 1800's. It used to be a player piano. One of those tall pianos with the sliding openings to let the beautiful sound out. Could not find anyone. Finally made it a package deal. Buy the house, get the piano. The young couple that bought the house got divorced a year later, sold the house and went their separate ways. I wonder if the piano is still there.

Big storms moving across the nation today. So far everything has gone north of me but we are supposed to get hit with multiple waves of storms starting in a couple hours as they start developing further south. For the first time that I remember. Interstate 75 south of Lexington KY closed due to downed power lines. They have the interstate open now but will have to close it again when the power company restrings the high voltage lines going across both lanes of the interstate.

Bought a Kontrol S49 with poly aftertouch, demo unit from Sweetwater. Waiting for them to clear up the "Serial number has already been registered to someone else" issue.

NI S61 MKIII, MacBookPro, Komplete Ultimate ... My kind of hardware.

And now I am resurrecting this thread as I am strongly considering a Novation Summit as my next keyboard. It is between that and the ASM Hydrasynth Deluxe. How did it go with the Summit?

The last time I was at a restaurant and a musician playing there stopped by my table to talk, he tried to hustle me into paying $20 for a requested song that my lady would like to hear. The lady happened to be my sister and neither of us would even consider paying $20 for a song request. The entire mariachi band was working the tables, hitting up patrons to pay for request. We never went back to that restaurant.

Well, I decided to watch the Eros tour on Disney+. It's a concert. I can sit through that. ... ... ... With an hour to go of this really long Taylor Swift concert I have finally realized how important it is to be part of the target audience if you want to enjoy a concert. Two and a half hours in, my biggest curiosity is how many times they used those risers wrapped with video screens to lift her into the air, then right back down. It seems more like a Vegas show than a concert, and the music might as well be recorded because the few times they marched the band out on that huge stage for a cameo appearance, then hid them away again, well, it did nothing to make me think they are really playing. After watching another 20 minutes I'm switching to a Santana Concert. Someday I will finish this concert. ... Maybe once I die and come back as a teen age girl. (Okay, just to be clear. This is not anti-TS, this is just a realization that it is not for me.)

I assume that is pitch bend on the left, and no mod. For me that is a product killer. Shocked they did not use the Roland stick. Everything else about the board seems good.

If I were doing my approach would probably be to record my own backing tracks. That way it is still all me. Keep it simple: drums, bass, rhythm and pads. Recorded music is much easier to deal with than a sequencer and sound sources.

Yes, I spent a lifetime with the drum set next to me and bass amp behind me. Sometimes I had an 18" 3-way keyboard cabinet behind me, and sometimes it was a floor monitor at my feet. A PA style cabinet with a wedge design that allows either 30 or 60 degree angling gives the most options, and options is what you need when dealing with various stages.

Also remember that you need space to place the speaker away from the wall.

Three years ago I decided to buy myself a wah wah pedal. Did a bit of research, settled on the Dunlap 535Q Crybaby. Got on Amazon to order it and saw the note at the top of the product page. "You purchased this item once before." Searched my order history and there it is, ordered in July 2009, along with a Roland Space Echo twin pedal and some of those little pedal connection cables. I searched the house and could not find it. I know I did not sell it, loan it, or leave it out in the rain. The pedal has to be here somewhere, and someday I will find it. Two weeks ago I was moving things around, both in my bedroom and closet, my man cave, and the garage. And what did I find? The Crybaby pedal. This morning I started to use it, cannot remember where I found it. ... ... ... I hate getting old. ☺️

Since a computer cannot actually produce a truly random number, will an AI ever be able to have a random thought?

Jupiter Xm is definitely king of the mini's. I could do a show with my Xm and Korg Wavestate. Both have a full range of sounds which makes them nice as backups. My issue with the Akai is load time. I like the instant sound change of a true ROMpler.

I would never depend on a a Mac internal drive of less than one TB. It is a constant battle for space. I always use the option, when given, to install samples and other data to external drives. NI and Spectrasonics are good about this. Akai MPC software will not let you specify external drives for samples, and now they have started hiding storage location to keep the user from moving it. So with NI Komplete, a bunch of Spectrasonics, Ableton Live Studio, Bitwig Studio, Reason 12, Logic Pro, FL Studio 21, Roland Cloud and a few others, despite moving as much as I can to an external 4TB drive velcroed to the back of my monitor, this is the info from my internal drive. Glad I decided to step up to 1TB, which is what I had on my previous MacBookPro 6 years ago.

I think the Fantom O lacks the memory space and processing power to accommodate a major update. The virtual piano that came with the big Fantom EX update is great but it depends on the extra processing power of the extra chip in the big Fantom. That chip is why so many of the great new features of the big Fantom are restricted to channel 1 and you can only use one at a time.

I'm still waiting for someone to develop a faux laptop that is actually a monitor, keyboard, trek-pad and speakers to connect to the Mini.

Had the original Montage 7 and got rid of it after a couple months. All that massive reverb was a turn off, but it was the MIDI implementation that caused me to quickly sell. Got a Roland Fantom 7 upgraded to EX and honestly I think the overly complicated interface is, well, both companies could use some assistance designing a more elegant interface. Same with the Jupiter X. Love the sound and the options, really wish the interface was more intuitive. Bought a MODX+ 6 and am fine with it. Use it as a preset machine and organized my favorites. I don't worry about creating my own splits or layers. I mostly wanted the DX engine.

But ... but ... I just bought Virtual String Machine 3 in November! My upgrade price is $53. I need to think about that for a while. Will see what the next Black Friday sales does for the price. Note that the GForce listed price is 69.99 pounds, which is currently $89.05.

The church where I occasionally fill in for drums had a TD-15 kit with cables hanging everywhere. I recently donated my TD-30x, along with a better V-Snare, extra cymbal, and a box of VELCRO Brand Cable Ties. I also got a stick holder and went to work. It is not perfect but it does look much better now. You can run some of the cableing along the drummer side of the framework, hiding a good part from the audience but they will always see the sections that connect to cymbals and drums. I used black Velcro strips and the frame and all cables are black. That helped.

I have quite a few hardware keyboards that can be a USB audio interface but never use them. My old, unused Windows DAW has a RME interface. Since going to MacBooks I've been locked into UAD Apollo Twins. I'm too vested in UAD plugins to go with anything else. I have two, a duo and a quad.

That is the one that would be my choice if I was still a serious player. For my use, and age, I've been happy with the lighter, cheaper versions. I have two sets, plus a single 12" that I bought, intending to turn it into a pair some day.

I was a BIG dual lever person when I had my Chroma. It is backward from a wheel, but once you get used to it, very natural to pull the lever towards you to bend a note. You can be more exact while pulling the lever towards you rather than pushing away. A lot of Chroma patches were set up to bend up one step when pulling, and dive bomb down one octave when pushing the other way. I also like that the mod lever can have different effects depending on the direction. Usually vibrato when pulling towards you, and filter or sync when pushing away.